Iomega announces a new data protection software

Iomega announced a new tool in the defense against data disasters: Iomega Never Down software for Windows PCs utilizing an eSATA interface.

The software works by keeping a complete, uncompressed backup copy of a Windows laptop or desktop computer’s system drive on an external eSATA hard drive. The speed and performance of the eSATA 3.0 Gbits/sec interface, up to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed USB), ensures that backup, recovery, and operation from the external drive proceeds at internal hard drive speeds.

Unlike a RAID 1 setup, where all data is copied to two drives at once (a process known as mirroring), Never Down creates backup copies manually or through Microsoft’s Scheduled Task Wizard. The advantage for Never Down users is that they can always revert back to their last intact backup copy and continue their work, whereas viruses and hacker attacks can disable both drives in a RAID 1 array simultaneously.

Not sure about their software but recently got their 1TB NAS - what a crap and rip off ! 1. It should be 1TB but it's shows 908GB free space (92GB is not such litle difference !!!). 2. Noisy , very noisy . 3. Full of bugs , especially UPnP server in it - does not least files with capitalized extension (like .MP3) as media files , ignore files with non-English characters in file name completely , the event based (file added/removed) DB update functionality does not work at all , no way to delete folders , often resets by itself o default settings ... bottom line - total crap.

Not a bad idea, I already do this with Norton Ghost, one of WD's 1TB drives & an external case, using eSATA. I got 935 GB after NTFS formatting, which is pretty normal, thanks to the HD industry using a 1012 bytes to calculate overall size.

Lord, no argument that your NAS is crap, but complaining about the format size as a ripoff? This complaint is as old as HDDs. And the answer is the same: the hardware makers chose base10 so 1000 = Meg * 1000 = Gig * 1000 = Terra, while Windows uses base2 so it uses 1024 for the #. I'm pretty certain the box the drive came in even mentions this method of calculation in small print, due to the 'oldness' of this confusion / complaint. And, don't forget that you get different 'usable' formatted space depending on what partition size, sector size, etc. Partion Magic and similar utilities all show these calculations and allow you to chose what you think is best for your system and requirements.